Les Hommes En Blanc (1955)

August 7, 1956

Screen: Country Medicos; 'The Doctors,' French Import, at the Paris

By BOSLEY CROWTHER

Published: August 7, 1956

FRENCH producer Paul Graetz, whose disposition to make films about lonely, impassioned men has resulted in such fine assorted items as "Devil in the Flesh" and "God Needs Men," has turned up another in "The Doctors," which came to the Paris yesterday. It is a simple story of a cynical medical student who becomes a country physican in a province of France.

Even though it now lacks some of the candor that was in it when it was shown abroad, such as the clinical details of a delicate heart operation and the wild behavior of medical students at a fancy-dress ball, it does view the toil of country practice with frankness and sincerity. What it lacks in clinical chills and sex excitement, it makes up in simple rustic sympathy.

To be sure, the story is not surprising. It has happened and happened many times, in movies and other forms of fiction, that young physicans have become involved with older, clumsier men in country practice, to underrate and pity them at the start, and then to admire and emulate them when they discover the human service they do.

In this case, the problem of our hero, above and beyond the obvious one of adjusting to his older sponsor, is to help a less attractive young physician and together with him break down the superstitions of the peasants in the community.

Raymond Pellegrin does a good job as the saturnine, cynical young man who grows to like the country. His deeper motivations are not too clear, but his immediate likes and dislikes are plain in his looks and attitudes. Especially are his tastes apparent with respect to Jeanne Moreau, who plays the medical daughter of a local official in a pretty, uncomplicated way. Fernand Ledoux as the older country doctor drags himself impressively through the role.

Ralph Habib's direction is literal and appreciative of the rough rural scene.